Oxalates
now browsing by category
Research links excessive oxalates to breast cancer
Reproduced from original article:
https://www.naturalhealth365.com/research-links-excessive-oxalates-to-breast-cancer.html
by: February 19, 2025
(NaturalHealth365) Information about little-known compounds called oxalates can be confusing and conflicting. They are often equated with the “bad” substances in foods, but, in reality, oxalates are neither good nor bad. They can become problematic, however, when too many of them accumulate in the body.
When there are too many oxalates – they can overwhelm the kidneys and lead to kidney stones and immune deficiency. Furthermore, research indicates that high levels of oxalate in the mammary area have been linked to breast cancer tumor growth as well.
The body itself forms most oxalates
Oxalates (COOH), or oxalic acid, are strongly acidic substances that help plants and animals metabolize. The body’s functions form about 60% to 80% of oxalates. The other 20 to 40% of oxalates come from food.
Most fruits and vegetables contain a small amount of oxalic acid, and they are found in the leaves of plants as opposed to the roots, stalks, and stems. The following foods contain a high amount of oxalates overall:
- Rhubarb
- Chocolate
- Spinach
- Beet greens
- Swiss chard
- Some nuts, especially almonds, cashews, and peanuts
- Some berries, especially gooseberries
- Lemon and lime peel
- Some grains and pasta (except brown rice)
- Some legumes, especially navy beans, black beans, and soybeans
- Okra
- Parsley
How are oxalates linked to breast cancer?
Oxalates are oxidizing substances. As such, they are extremely volatile and can damage tissue in large amounts. Oxalate crystals cause the formation of kidney stones, which can block the flow of urine and lead to kidney infection and bladder cancer.
These crystals are also razor sharp and can cause direct damage and long-lasting inflammation to whatever internal tissues they come into contact with. Oxalate-iron crystals can lead to iron depletion. When calcium-oxalate crystals form, they can lodge in internal organs and bone. As they grow, they crowd out bone marrow, leading to immune deficiency and anemia.
Excess oxalates also can chelate heavy metals. However, oxalates trap metals like mercury and lead in tissues, unlike other chelators. Excess oxalate has been linked to fibromyalgia, vulvodynia (vulvar pain), digestive disorders, and autism.
The most startling new connection between excess oxalates and disease has to do with breast cancer, however. A study conducted by the National University of Cordova in Argentina compared the oxalate levels of breast cancer tumor tissue and regular breast tissue. They found that “all tested breast tumor tissues contain a higher concentration of oxalates than their counterpart non-pathological breast tissue.”
The researchers also discovered that oxalic acid caused tumor proliferation and stimulated the expression of pro-tumor genes. Surprisingly, proliferation did not happen when oxalate was injected into the backs of laboratory mice. This indicates that high oxalate levels do not induce cancer tumor growth in all types of tissue.
Three ways to reduce your oxalate levels
Obtain calcium from natural foods, not calcium supplements.
Calcium has an interesting relationship with oxalates. Approximately 5-15% of the world population will develop some form of kidney stone. Of those, 80% will be calcium-oxalate stones. When calcium is combined with foods that are high in oxalates within the intestines, the two together form an oxalate-calcium crystal that the body cannot absorb.
When this happens, a “stone” is formed that will make its way to the kidneys to eventually be eliminated in the urine. The presence of oxalate-calcium crystals, which can block urine flow and cause kidney infection, can also lead to a higher risk of renal, pelvis, and bladder cancers. These same kinds of crystals can also form in the lungs, nerves, brain, bones, blood vessels, and joints.
Does this mean you should limit calcium intake if you are prone to kidney stones? Not necessarily. Research conducted on vegetarians found that they did not have higher-than-normal rates of calcium deficiency or osteoporosis caused by oxalate interference.
In fact, according to a study published in the European Journal of Epidemiology, vegetarians had a lower rate of kidney stones than meat eaters did. Those who consumed calcium supplements regularly, however, have shown time and again to have higher rates of kidney stones. Calcium supplementation has also been linked to both prostate and breast cancer. Stick to natural and preferably vegetable and fruit-based calcium sources to avoid kidney stones and cancer.
Be aware of your protein intake.
Be cautious about protein, especially if it is derived from meat and dairy. Oxalates are produced from amino acids in the liver.
Amino acids are the building blocks on which proteins are made so some researchers make the connection between total protein amounts and total oxalates formed. For meat-eating women, the general recommendation is around 5 ounces a day. This is equivalent to a small hamburger patty or four eggs. The USDA states that, on average, Americans eat 30% more meat protein than the recommended allowance.
Maintain good intestinal flora.
According to research, some individuals have a physiology prone to higher levels of oxalate uptake in the digestive tract (thus, a higher risk of kidney stones). Although there is evidence to suggest that hereditary disposition plays a role for some people, there is also a strong link between kidney stone formation and disorders of the digestive system, such as inflammatory bowel disease, leaky gut, and Crohn’s.
Could oxalate hyper-absorption have more to do with extreme gut flora imbalance than genetics? The jury is still out on that one. What is known, however, is that it is the job of specific flora, in particular, certain species of Oxalobacter formigenes, Lactobacillus, and Bifidobacteria, to process oxalic acid and prepare it for absorption. Currently, there are several studies underway which focus on the role of oral probiotics in this process.
Let food work for you to keep oxalate levels in balance
Remember that problems only emerge when there is an excess of oxalates in the system. The standard American diet contributes to oxalate overload, but you can also keep it in check by being proactive with prevention. Eating antioxidant-rich food, consuming citrate-rich lemon and lime juice (which experts say can help prevent calcium-oxalate kidney stones), staying hydrated, and watching your salt intake are other ways to keep kidney stones in check.
Also, don’t let the fear of kidney stones prevent you from getting adequate amounts of vitamin C and D. One of the ways that oxalates are formed is through conversion from vitamin C. However, studies thus far have been inclusive as to whether high vitamin C intake actually leads to increased oxalate production.
In regards to vitamin D, deficiency of this vital substance has reached pandemic proportions in the developed world, including among those who have experienced kidney stones. Be sure to get your levels checked the next time you get blood work done. Maintaining a healthy balance of all substances in the body, including oxalates, is the only way to achieve and experience true health naturally.
Sources for this article include:
NIH.gov
NIH.gov
Oxfordjournals.org
MDPI.com
NIH.gov
NIH.gov
NIH.gov
Sciencedaily.com
Scientificamerican.com
Nutrition.org
How Your Gut Microbiome Affects Your Oxalate Tolerance
Reproduced from original article:
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2024/06/23/oxalate-intolerance-gut-microbiome.aspx
Analysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola June 23, 2024
STORY AT-A-GLANCE
- Oxalates are naturally occurring substances found in many plants, including vegetables and fruit
- While they’re a normal part of human metabolism and your diet, can contribute to the formation of kidney stones and other problems in sensitive individuals
- The problem isn’t the oxalates themselves but a damaged gut, which interferes with your body’s ability to clear oxalates effectively
- In my interview with Ruth Ann Foster, ScD, BSN, RN, we explore the underlying causes of that gut dysfunction and how it relates to overall health
- A diet of ultraprocessed foods and antibiotics are two primary culprits underlying gut dysfunction and oxalate intolerance
Oxalates are naturally occurring substances found in many plants, including vegetables, fruits, nuts and seeds. Chemically, oxalate is the ionized form of oxalic acid, explains Ruth Ann Foster, ScD, BSN, RN.1 While they’re a normal part of human metabolism and your diet, they can bind to minerals like calcium, forming crystals known as calcium oxalate.
When consumed in large amounts or in susceptible individuals, oxalates can contribute to the formation of kidney stones. However, the problem isn’t the oxalates themselves but a damaged gut, which interferes with your body’s ability to clear oxalates effectively.
In my interview with Foster, who has a doctorate in holistic nutrition and studies the relationships between minerals, microbes and water, we explore the underlying causes of that gut dysfunction and how it relates to overall health.
People Have Eaten High-Oxalate Diets for Millenia
“I really got started on oxalates when I was doing my dissertation on magnesium and drinking water. And because magnesium is, you know, vital it inside the cell,” Foster explains. “It’s an antagonist with calcium, which is made mainly outside of the cell. And, you know, the majority of kidney stones are calcium oxalate, and that has coincided with a deficiency in magnesium. So, I was well aware of problems with oxalates.”2
However, she started to wonder why oxalates are such a problem. Initially, she thought plants may be the issue, assuming Eskimos and other native cultures didn’t eat a lot of high-oxalate foods and were therefore healthy, with low rates of kidney stones. But it turned out that high-oxalate foods are common in many traditional diets:3
“I found that there are a lot of ancestral tribes and communities that ate a lot of oxalates and a lot of people that are still living on them today. So, then I started looking more into kidney stone disease and realize yes, while it’s been around since antiquity, it really has taken off exponentially since the Industrial Revolution — since we started eating processed foods.
And, you know, processing our water to take the magnesium out of the drinking water … one of the first groups of people that I looked at … were the people in the lower Pecos … region of I think it’s Western Texas, and they ate a lot of oxalates. But they were able to clear them.
And then looking around at that, looking at animals in the kind of desert area, there’s a wood rat, a white-throated wood rat, that also consumes most of its diet in an oxalate cactus and things like that. But it also excretes them.
So, scientists are now using the woodrat to study our microbiome. And they’ve taken some of the transplanted fecal material from the woodrat into lab rats. And they’ve been able to maintain oxalate clearing tolerance for nine months later. So, there’s something going on in the gut microbiome.”
Foster also researched the Inuits, first assuming that their very low rates of kidney stone disease are due to a diet low in fruits and vegetables, and low in oxalates. Yet, once again, she revealed these native cultures have eaten high-oxalate foods all along, without the problems they cause to so many people today:4
“It turns out … the Inuits eat a lot of high-oxalate foods, and they eat them all year long. They don’t just eat them [during] their short little growing season. They ferment them, they dry them, and so on …
Plus, the other thing that they would do is they eat the rumen of some of the reindeer that they find, which is, again, it’s going to have some bacteria in it. And that helps them to be able to process through these things. So then looking at Africa, same kind of thing, high-oxalate foods. And in each one of these situations, all of these people have been able to clear the oxalates.”
Antibiotics, Ultraprocessed Foods Are Destroying Gut Health
Exposures to antibiotics and ultraprocessed foods represent a key difference in traditional cultures and those living in the modern world. These factors are destroying gut health among those living in the Western world, such that many people are unable to handle high-oxalate foods.
“Overall, accumulating evidence reveals that kidney stones are fundamentally linked to a damaged gut, which impairs the body’s ability to clear oxalates. We must, therefore, consider the real culprits like refined sweeteners, ultraprocessed foods and seed oils — hallmarks of the modern industrial diet,” Foster writes.5
One consequence is that an important bacterium, Oxalobacter formigenes, is now missing in many adults’ guts. “A lot of the primitive cultures still have Oxalobacter in their guts,” Foster says.6 This beneficial bacterium plays a crucial role in the metabolism and regulation of bodily oxalate levels. It digests oxalate crystals and basically signals the gut wall to excrete oxalate for its own nourishment.
In this way, Oxalobacter helps reduce the concentration of oxalate in your gut, which can consequently lower the risk of oxalate crystallization and the formation of kidney stones and other health problems. However, this is just one type of beneficial bacteria involved in oxalate degradation. According to Foster:7
“With rapid advances in technology, scientists have learned that multiple bacterial species can degrade oxalate, working through a large network. For example, monitoring the gut bacteria of over one thousand healthy participants, one study found that the majority (92%) of gut microbiomes contained several species of oxalate-degrading bacteria.
Because of the complexity of the oxalate-degrading network, researchers now understand the importance of assessing gut health in its entirety rather than focusing on a single bacterial type such as O. formigenes … Hence, a healthy gut is key to maintaining oxalate tolerance.”
Save This Article for Later – Get the PDF Now
Healthy Foods Often Get Blamed for Problems Caused by a Damaged Gut
Often, Foster says, when people try to switch from a highly processed diet to a healthy one, they introduce more high-oxalate foods, like spinach and beets. Then, digestive issues, such as bloating, gas and abdominal pain, may occur due to the irritation of the intestinal lining by oxalates.
“You want to correct it and so you start eating healthy, and then you get even sicker … then, instead of blaming the bad foods, you blame the healthy food,” Foster says. In short, as a result of an ultraprocessed diet, mitochondrial dysfunction and an inability to create sufficient cellular energy occurs.
So, many people have lost the ability to maintain a high enough concentration of beneficial bacteria in their gut that actually digest the healthy fibers in fruit, vegetables and grain. Then, when you do eat those types of foods, you get worse, as you’re not feeding the good bacteria anymore, because they’re not there, they can’t survive.
Instead, you have a buildup of pathogenic bacteria that produce toxic endotoxin, one of several factors that destroys mitochondrial function.
Two Major Types of Bacteria — Oxygen Tolerant and Oxygen Intolerant
A healthy gut with a properly maintained anaerobic environment supports the growth of beneficial oxygen intolerant, such as the keystone species Akkermansia. When the oxygen gradient is disturbed due to insufficient energy production (as seen in metabolically inflexible individuals), it allows pathogenic oxygen tolerant bacteria to proliferate.
These bacteria often produce more virulent endotoxins, also known as lipopolysaccharides (LPS), which can cause inflammation if they translocate across the compromised gut barrier into the systemic circulation. Oxalates indirectly contribute to this scenario by exacerbating mitochondrial dysfunction and reducing cellular energy production.
Colonocytes are the epithelial cells lining the surface of your colon, where they make up the majority — about 80% — of the epithelial cell population. Not only do they serve as the barrier, the actual lining of your gut, but they perform beta oxidation and are involved in the metabolism of short chain fatty acids.
In the process of metabolizing short chain fatty acids, colonocytes consume a significant amount of oxygen, reducing the oxygen levels in your colon. The short chain fatty acids that colonocytes need are produced from the fibers that you eat — typically from healthy foods like vegetables, apples and other fruits.
These fibers nourish both good and bad bacteria, however. if you have a preponderance of pathogenic bacteria, it makes it hard to eat healthy, because eating healthy foods makes you feel worse due to the radical increase in endotoxin, which can kill you.
In my view, the No. 1 cause of death, that exceeds heart disease and cancer, is endotoxemia. Healthy, unprocessed foods are historically all our ancient ancestors had — they didn’t have to deal with processed foods. So, they had a healthy gut and were able to consume high-oxalate foods without a problem.
Once your gut is healthy, consuming dietary oxalate helps you maintain tolerance by feeding sustaining oxalate-degrading bacteria, Foster notes. The key is to consume a healthy amount — neither too much nor too little:8
“Maintaining tolerance by daily consuming some dietary oxalate is important. Ironically, when dietary oxalate intake is lower than fifty milligrams per day, oxalate absorption increases significantly. At the same time, overconsuming high amounts of dietary oxalates, especially in the form of foods like spinach smoothies, can be hazardous.”
As mentioned, you have to have cellular energy to consume high-oxalate foods without issue. But if you don’t have it, then you enter a cascading downhill spiral that gets increasingly worse.
Modern Diets Are the Problem
Foster points out that it’s not dietary oxalates that are the issue, but rather modern diets focused on ultraprocessed foods:9
“Considering escalating diabetes rates and poor American dietary habits, it appears that gut dysbiosis and the overconsumption of industrially ultraprocessed foods are more responsible for oxalate toxicity than the overconsumption of so-called ‘superfoods’ like spinach or sweet potatoes.
Simply put, it is not oxalate-containing foods like spinach that are increasing the production and absorption of oxalate. To address the oxalate problem, we must consider the impact of processed and ultraprocessed industrial foods on gut and kidney health.”
This includes seeds oils, high in omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) like linoleic acid. Foster explains:10
“Overconsumption of industrial seed oils, high in omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs), contributes to AGE [advanced glycation end product] production … The fatty acid ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 is a driving factor in kidney disease and many other chronic illnesses.
In the past 30 years, dietary omega-6 consumption has increased in the face of omega-3 deficiency. The ideal ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 is about two to one, but today’s ratio is over 20 to one. Researchers have noted that a ‘USDA egg’ has an omega-6 to omega-3 ratio of about 20:1.
Industrial seed oils and other sources of omega-6 weaken and soften the cell membranes, which enhance oxalate binding to the nephrons and begin crystal formation. Accumulating evidence shows a link between increased consumption of omega-6 fatty acids and kidney stone disease.
In contrast, higher intakes of omega-3 fatty acid (mostly from seafood) protect against the risk of kidney stone formation, CKD [chronic kidney disease] and other degenerative diseases, as evidenced by the diet of traditional Inuit populations, rich in omega-3 fatty acids.”
The addition of excessive amounts of omega-6 fat to the diet via ultraprocessed foods is what catalyzed the now epidemic levels of mitochondrial dysfunction. It caused depletion of colonocytes because of the gradual intrusion and increase in oxygen concentration in the colon that causes this cascade of death in your microbiome.
Glucose (Dextrose) May Offer a Short-Term Solution
In my view, the healthiest fuel for your mitochondria is glucose, not fat, as fat increases reductive stress and slows down the electron transport chain. Some cells, like the colonocytes, thrive on beta oxidation, so do our heart cells. Most cells require glucose, but if you’re following a keto or carnivore diet, you’re likely carb deficient.
There’s a lot of consequences from that, but many people get better on carnivore or keto because they stop eating ultraprocessed foods and feeding these patterns.
In the short-term, however, to get out of this destructive cycle, consider taking glucose, which is more commonly called dextrose. It’s pretty inexpensive — about $5 a pound. Glucose never reaches your colon; it’s all absorbed in your small intestine. Because of that, it avoids the complication of providing fuel to the facultative anaerobes, the pathogenic bacteria that can make endotoxin.
Consuming glucose is preferable to not consuming any carbs, which is highly problematic, in part because your cortisol level goes up. Ultimately, if your body is producing high amounts of cortisol to compensate for the lack of healthy carbs in your diet, this is not a state you want to be in for a prolonged period if you want to live a long and healthy life.
So, if you’re unable to tolerate healthy carbs, try pure glucose for a few weeks. This is especially useful for those who are seriously damaged, who don’t have the capacity to eat virtually any carbohydrates. You can go on a high-dextrose diet until your gut starts to heal. You save more cellular energy, which allows you to introduce more carbs back in to your diet, helping to restore your mitochondrial function.
Fraud in the Probiotics Market
Unfortunately, once you’re lacking cellular energy and your gut health is disrupted, most probiotic supplements on the market are useless, as they’re all fatally flawed. No one has yet figured out how to how to take that raw material and put it in a capsule and get it into your gut. It dies in the meantime. There’s a lot of fraud going on in this area, which I’m going to expose shortly.
Further, no one has yet grown Oxalobacter, but I’ve got a research team on it right now to define the protocol. These bugs are very difficult to grow and require many millions of dollars of investment to identify the specific protocol that causes them to thrive and then to harvest them. Once they’re harvested, you still have the technical challenge of putting them into a capsule in a way that doesn’t kill them.
I’m hoping we’ll have Oxalobacter within a year or two. It’s one of our priorities to get that out because it’s just like a seed to encourage good bacterial growth in your gut. But remember, if you put a seed in the Sahara Desert, and there’s no water, the seed can’t grow. It’s the same with Oxalobacter.
Even if you have the best Oxalobacter supplement in the world, if you put it in most everyone’s gut, nothing’s going to happen because the environment isn’t healthy enough to support it. You have to take care of the foundational causes of the issue first, including resolving mitochondrial dysfunction and an inability to create sufficient cellular energy.
Protecting Your Microbiome Is Key
The health of your microbiome begins even before birth, from conception. This crucial window of development sets the stage for your gut health — a topic Foster says she’d like to expand on in book form:11
“The book that I would like to write is … the first 1000 days. And it is from conception to about age 3, when that whole microbiome is developed … we get our gut colonized at birth … we [once] thought that the baby was born sterile. We now know that babies come out with, I think, 100 different species in the colon, ready to go. And it comes from the mother’s … microbiome.”
However, early antibiotic treatments, lack of breastfeeding and other factors often disrupt gut microbiome early on. At any age, however, promoting a healthy gut microbiome by avoiding ultraprocessed foods and consuming probiotic-rich foods like yogurt, kefir and fermented vegetables can support the growth of beneficial bacteria, including those that can degrade oxalates like Oxalobacter.
Drinking sufficient water is also crucial as it helps to flush out oxalates through your urine and prevents kidney stones from forming. Foster explains that not only is the quality of your drinking water important but the mineral content also matters:12
“Higher mineral content is associated with increased urinary citrate, while lower mineral content is not. Mineral water frequently contains bicarbonate, which is absent in tap water. Gerolsteiner, a naturally sparkling mineral water, is a great source of magnesium and high in bicarbonate. As mentioned, magnesium is a natural stone inhibitor, while bicarbonate increases the excretion of citrate, another important inhibitor.
Mineral water provides the most bioavailable forms of magnesium and calcium. Because they are hydrated (ionic), these minerals are rapidly absorbed. Likewise, raw milk is a valuable source of bioavailable magnesium and calcium. Other liquids to increase hydration can include bone broths, soups, tea (depending on oxalate content) and limited amounts of sour kombucha.”
Kidney Stones in Children Are Becoming More Prevalent — Here’s Why and How to Fight Them
Reproduced from original article:
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2024/05/16/kidney-stones-in-children.aspx
Analysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola May 16, 2024
STORY AT-A-GLANCE
- Cases of kidney stones among children are increasing, and although less common than in adults, it could become a lifelong battle
- Oxalates, which are found in many plant foods, are a contributing factor to the rising cases of kidney stones. When these compounds bind with calcium, they form calcium oxalate crystals, which are microscopic and razor-sharp, and can cause significant tissue damage
- By optimizing your metabolic flexibility, you can maintain a low-oxygen environment in your gut. This allows healthy obligate anaerobes, which can help metabolize and eliminate oxalates, to thrive
- Removing high-oxalate foods from your diet is the first step to minimize their harmful effects and help heal your gut. Some strategies that can aid in eliminating oxalates are also discussed here
Kidney stones are hard masses that form from the chemicals in the urine when there’s too much waste and too little liquid. They can be as small as a grain of sand, or as big as a pebble — in some cases, they can grow as large as a golf ball. As your body works to eliminate the stone, it can lead to irritation or blockage, causing intense pain and other symptoms.1
In adults, kidney stones are a common health complaint, with 8 out of 1,000 adults being diagnosed yearly.2 Alarmingly, cases among children are increasing as well.
Is Your Child at Risk of Developing Kidney Stones?
According to an article in ABC7,3 kidney stones have become more prevalent in children over the last 20 years. Although less common than in adults, it could still be a lifelong battle. The article tells the story of Alex Zellers, a 4-year-old with a rare genetic disease called cystinuria, which caused him to develop enlarged kidney stones that had to be surgically removed.4
“One stone in his kidney was the size of a golf ball. The other, in his bladder, was the size of a lacrosse ball. ‘It’s just like a giant dense egg. It’s just a big mass,’ described Kate, Alex’s mother.”
In the article, Dr. Greg Tasian, a pediatric urologist with Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, explains how kidney stones form, saying “Your body doesn’t absorb certain amino acids and that cystine accumulates and crystallizes in the urine forming stones early in life.”
And although Alex’s condition is rare, Tasian claims that he is seeing an increase in young patients with kidney stones and says that several lifestyle factors are to blame, such as eating more ultraprocessed foods, excessive of use antibiotics and being chronically dehydrated, especially during hot weather.5
However, there could be another more significant contributing factor, and it’s found in the foods you eat — even those that are considered healthy.
Oxalates Are Linked to Kidney Stones, but What Are They?
Oxalates are natural compounds found in many plant foods, including beans, grains, seeds and nuts, fruits, berries and herbs.6 They’re also called dicarboxylic acid, meaning they are composed of two carbon dioxide (CO2) molecules.
However, having two carboxyl groups (COOH), causes them to lose protons under physiological conditions. This leaves them with a negative charge, which then allows them to bind to positively charged ions like calcium.
Chemically, oxalate is a salt; and as with other salts, it forms crystals that your body innately has a limited capacity to process. When oxalates bind with calcium, they form calcium oxalate crystals, which are microscopic and razor-sharp and can cause significant tissue damage. And because they are not soluble, they can accumulate.
This is what causes kidney stones to form. Calcium stones are the primary type, making up 80% of kidney stones.7 But contributing to the formation of kidney stones is just one of the ways oxalates wreak havoc on your health. These compounds can affect numerous body functions and cause a wide range of symptoms.
Save This Article for Later – Get the PDF Now
A High-Oxalate Diet Can Lead to Joint Pain, Digestive Problems and Skin Irritation
Excessive oxalates can affect your absorption of essential nutrients and lead to mineral deficiencies. When they accumulate in your joints, they can cause crystals, similar to those in the kidneys, to form. This can trigger inflammation and joint pain, resembling symptoms of gout or arthritis.
In your urinary tract, oxalates can cause irritation, discomfort and an increased risk of urinary tract infections (UTIs). The razor-sharp crystals can also make urination painful, and contribute to irritable bladder syndrome, which is characterized by frequent, urgent and/or painful urination.
Meanwhile, bloating, gas, diarrhea and abdominal pain can arise when oxalates affect your intestinal tract, especially in people with sensitive digestive systems or who have irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).
There’s also research linking a high-oxalate diet with fibromyalgia symptoms, and while still not fully understood, the theory is that oxalate crystals may be causing inflammation in the muscles and connective tissues, causing widespread pain and fatigue.
Once your body tries to eliminate oxalates, they can be excreted through your skin, particularly if your kidneys can no longer process the excessive amounts of oxalates in your system. This can form crystalline deposits on your skin, causing irritation, rash and intense itching.
I struggled with this health problem 15 years ago, when I developed a rash that caused such intense itching it made me lose sleep. When scratched, the rash would turn into hard nodules that would last for months or years.
I tried numerous natural interventions, including icing the affected area and applying aloe gel, but could not find any long-lasting solution — it was only when I addressed the oxalates in my diet that I was able to find relief.
Oxalates Can Interfere With Your Cellular Functions
Another way that oxalates harm your health is by disrupting enzyme functions that are essential to cellular energy production. Oxalate ions can bind to the enzymes in the mitochondrial electron transport chain, which are essential for adenosine triphosphate (ATP) production.
Your mitochondria produce ATP, which is why they are called the “powerhouses” of your cells. ATP is the currency of your cellular energy and is the lifeblood of cellular processes. It powers everything, including processes like muscle contraction, nerve impulse propagation, synthesis of essential biomolecules and the maintenance of cellular homeostasis.
When oxalates disrupt ATP production, it can lead to decreased energy production and increased oxidative stress within cells. This then leads to a broader range of metabolic and physiological dysfunctions.
Avoid These High-Oxalate Foods
Everyone needs to be concerned about oxalates, not just those dealing with kidney stones or other chronic health issues, metabolic inflexibility or mineral imbalances. The first step is to identify high-oxalate foods and remove them from your diet, until your gut is healed.
I recently interviewed Sally Norton, who is an esteemed authority on oxalates. Her expertise is indeed invaluable for anyone seeking to understand this topic. In our discussion, she specified the foods that are particularly loaded with oxalates. You may be surprised, as some of these are on many people’s “healthy foods” list:
• Spinach — Their oxalate levels can be as high as 600 to 800 mg per 100 grams.
• Almonds — Almonds generally contain about 122 mg of oxalates per 100 grams. However, all nuts in general are particularly problematic, since they contain linoleic acid (LA). Even macadamia nuts can add to your toxic load, as they contain oleic acid, which could just be as bad as LA.
“These seeds from the trees are designed with all these multiple anti-nutrients to kick you in the gut. All the anti-nutrients are gut toxic. They’re all causing some degree of gut damage. Nuts are just designed to be indigestible. They’re designed to dismantle your ability to digest food. If you want a healthy gut, you don’t want nuts kicking your gut over and over again,” says Norton.
• Peanut butter — Peanut butter can have around 140 mg per 100 grams.
• Sweet potatoes — They contain about 30 mg of oxalates per 100 grams. (Although this is considered high compared to other vegetables, it’s actually much lower than spinach or nuts)
• Figs — They have approximately 40 mg per 100 grams.
In addition to spinach, high-oxalate leafy greens that are considered “superfoods” are Swiss chard and beet greens, so you may want to avoid them if you’re sensitive to oxalates or are struggling with kidney stones.
You may also want to avoid these collagen-rich protein sources until your gut is healed, as collagen breakdown can lead to oxalate production and aggravate your condition:
- Bone broth
- Gelatin
- Animal skins, tendon and ligaments
- Meat cuts with connective tissues such as oxtail, neck and shank
- Organ meats like heart and liver
Healing Your Gut Can Help Address Oxalate Toxicity
I mentioned above that healing your gut health is crucial to help curb the effects of oxalates, but before you do that, you need to address your metabolic inflexibility. This refers to your body’s diminished ability to switch between burning fuel sources, mainly carbohydrates and fats.
When you’re metabolically inflexible, it can affect your body’s ability to produce energy. This can have a profound impact on your gut health, particularly your large intestine, as it hinders your body’s ability to maintain a low-oxygen environment in this organ.
You need a low-oxygen environment in your large intestine because not only does it help keep pathogenic bacteria in check, but it also allows healthy obligate anaerobes to thrive. These are a primitive type of bacteria that cannot survive when exposed to oxygen.
So what do obligate anaerobes have to do with oxalate toxicity? It turns out that there are obligate anaerobes that can digest oxalate crystals, called Oxalobacter formongines.8 These beneficial bacteria thrive in a low-oxygen environment and have a unique ability to efficiently metabolize oxalates.
Using specific enzymes, Oxalobacter bacteria break down oxalate crystals into formate and carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide then helps retain the low-oxygen environment in your intestine, allowing these primitive organisms to thrive and support your health. Through simple passive diffusion, the crystals are released and wind up in your intestine where the Oxalobacter continues to digest them until the oxalate toxicity issues disappear.
To put it simply, you need to optimize your metabolic flexibility so you can maintain a low-oxygen environment in your gut and allow Oxalobacter bacteria to radically reduce the level of oxalates in your tissues.
I believe this is the ultimate cure for most kidney stones. It’s far more efficient and effective than the conventional approach for this common health condition, as it goes straight to the root cause of the problem.
Step 1 in healing your gut would be to eliminate linoleic acid (LA) from your diet, as LA precipitates the formation of peroxynitrites that ravage mitochondrial function and impede energy production, forcing your body to rely on glycolysis in the cytoplasm of your cells rather than the electron transport chain (ETC) of your mitochondria.
This, in turn, results in the impairment of your gut by allowing oxygen leakage into your gut that kills beneficial bacteria and allows pathogenic bacteria to thrive.
There’s No Quick Way to Detox Oxalates
If you or your children struggle with kidney stones or have other signs of oxalate toxicity, I encourage you to watch my interview with Norton, as we discuss many strategies and food choices that can help minimize the harmful effects of oxalates or aid in their elimination.
Aside from limiting your intake of high-oxalate foods mentioned above, here are some key recommendations to remember:
| Increase your calcium intake — When you consume foods high in calcium or take calcium supplements, they can bind to oxalates in the intestines and prevent them from being absorbed. They will also help facilitate oxalate excretion through your stool. Foods rich in calcium include dairy products and leafy greens. |
| Stay hydrated — Drinking sufficient water will help flush out oxalates through your urine and keep kidney stones from forming. |
| Optimize your gut health — Promote a healthy gut microbiome by consuming probiotic-rich foods like yogurt, kefir and fermented vegetables. This will help support the growth of Oxalobacter and other beneficial bacteria. |
| Citrate consumption — Citrate, found in citrus fruits like lemons and oranges, can help by binding with calcium and oxalate, thereby reducing the formation of kidney stones. Avoid over-supplementation with ascorbic acid, however, as high doses can convert into oxalate. Ascorbic acid is the most common form of vitamin C used in dietary supplements. |
| Cook high-oxalate foods well — Cooking methods that involve boiling can help reduce oxalate content in foods as the oxalates will leach into the cooking water. |
| Topical calcium for oxalate-related skin irritations — Applying topical calcium can alleviate your symptoms by precipitating oxalates at the site. |
Remember that healing your body takes time — don’t expect results overnight. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. In some cases, it may take two years to two-and-a-half years after following a low-oxalate diet to see the effects, and they may not be pleasant.
For example, you may suddenly get sicker, as your kidneys are finally cleaned up and can excrete oxalate more efficiently. This means your body is tapping into deeper deposits. Possible side effects can include gastritis, migraines, anxiety attacks, gout and other types of toxic reactions.
Your uric acid may also increase, as it is replacing the oxalic acid. In this instance, this means you’re clearing oxalate. You may also notice tartar buildup on your teeth, gritty stools, gritty eyes, hemorrhoids and burning stools — all these are symptoms that your body is healing itself.
Cellular Energy — The Very Essence of Life
My personal struggle with the skin irritation triggered by oxalates 15 years ago is an eye-opener. It’s what I consider the pivotal turning point in my health journey, as it is the best illustration of just how crucial it is to have a healthy, well-functioning microbiome to your overall health.
Unfortunately, virtually none of us have a healthy gut microbiome. This is a result mainly because of large multinational corporations taking advantage of us and steering us toward unnatural products that end up harming our mitochondria and ultimately our ability to create cellular energy.
I believe that your ability to produce sufficient cellular energy is the single most important factor to fuel your body’s innate repair and regeneration processes so it can recover from diseases and any type of health obstacle.
With that said, I will be releasing a new book this summer that delves into the science of cellular energy. In this book, I’ll explain in detail the biochemical pathways that provide energy to your cells, as well as also how disrupting these pathways can put you or your loved ones at risk of progressively worsening health issues.
I’ll also share practical strategies to help support your mitochondrial health and enhance your cellular energy production through healthy food choices, lifestyle changes and proper supplementation. This book is a definite must-read, as it can help you rediscover the foundational strategies to heal your body and ward off diseases, so stay tuned.
Oxalates — The Hidden Dangers in ‘Healthy’ Foods
Reproduced from original article:
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2024/04/28/oxalates-in-food.aspx
Analysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola April 28, 2024
STORY AT-A-GLANCE
- Oxalates, or dicarboxylic acids, are natural compounds found in many foods like leafy greens and nuts. Despite their simple carbon dioxide-based structure, they can form harmful crystals in the body and disrupt biological processes
- Oxalates can bind to calcium to form insoluble crystals that may lead to kidney stones and other health issues
- Oxalates can also inhibit crucial enzymes in the mitochondrial electron transport chain, reducing energy production and increasing oxidative stress
- If you struggle with chronic health issues related to mineral imbalances or metabolic inflexibility, minimizing your oxalate intake is advisable
- Foods high in oxalates that should be avoided if sensitive include spinach, almonds, peanut butter and sweet potatoes
In today’s episode, I am thrilled to welcome back Sally Norton, an esteemed authority on oxalates, whose expertise is invaluable for anyone seeking to understand this topic.
Norton has dedicated years to meticulously analyzing data and compiling an authoritative guide on oxalates, “Toxic Superfoods: How Oxalate Overload Is Making You Sick — and How to Get Better.” In it, she reviews how and why foods we’ve been told are healthy can undermine your health.
Her academic background includes a bachelor’s degree in nutritional science from Cornell University and her master’s degree in public health from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. In this interview, we explore the broader implications of oxalates on health, Norton’s personal journey with oxalate sensitivity, and her innovative solutions for common nutritional misunderstandings.
What Are Oxalates?
Oxalates are natural compounds found in many foods, including leafy greens, nuts, and seeds. Another term for oxalate is dicarboxylic acid, which is made up by two carbon dioxide (CO2) molecules. As I’ve discussed in previous articles, CO2 is essential for health and life itself, so how is it that two CO2 molecules together cause so much harm?
The key problem with oxalates is not their CO2 origin but rather their ability to form crystals that interfere with normal biological processes. Dicarboxylic acids, such as oxalate, are characterized by having two carboxyl groups (COOH), which can lose protons under physiological conditions, leaving them with a negative charge.
This negative charge allows them to bind positively charged ions like calcium. When oxalates bind with calcium, they form calcium oxalate crystals, which are not soluble and can accumulate, leading to the formation of kidney stones or other tissue deposits.
Moreover, the electromagnetic properties of these charged oxalate ions can interfere with cellular functions. For example, the negatively charged oxalate can disrupt enzyme functions that are crucial for cellular energy production.
The enzymes in the mitochondrial electron transport chain, which are vital for ATP (energy) production, can be inhibited by the binding of oxalate ions, resulting in decreased energy production and increased oxidative stress within cells. In this way, oxalates contribute to broader metabolic and physiological dysfunctions.
This paradoxical nature of oxalates — arising from a simple and essential molecule like CO2 but leading to complex health challenges — illustrates the nuanced interactions within human biochemistry. In essence, the “charging” of dicarboxylic acids like oxalate transforms them into reactive molecules that can disrupt normal cellular processes through electromagnetic interactions.
As a result, people with compromised kidney function aren’t the only ones who need to be concerned about oxalates. Just about anyone struggling with chronic health issues related to mineral imbalances and/or metabolic flexibility may be adversely impacted by them and would do well to minimize their intake.
Oxalate Rashes Are a Common Symptom of Oxalate Toxicity
Oxalate toxicity can cause several problems that are very common, such as oxalate rashes — intensely itchy rashes that have no apparent cause. I struggled with that for 15 years before I finally discovered the cause. While using my aloe vera plants helped me, the best solution is to avoid oxalate-rich foods, as they’re what’s causing it.
Topical calcium citrate can also help resolve those itchy rashes. The reason topical calcium citrate works so well is twofold. Calcium binds to and forms precipitates with oxalates. It also addresses the calcium and electrolyte interference caused by oxalates.
“This interference with electrolytes and calcium is a major toxic effect,” Norton says. “And as the immune system is trying to deal with those oxalates in the subdermis, you’re getting additional electrolyte disturbances.
I don’t really know the mechanism of why that calcium topically is so powerful, but it’s amazing [for] any skin injury, People who are doing hair removal or whatever, damaging their skin, putting calcium on top of it, it just heals like overnight …
Interestingly, you can see it in the primary hyperoxaluria literature where high oxalate levels turn fascia and other connective tissues into calcified sheets. You can see it in the X-rays in kids that end up dying of oxalate poisoning that, just because the body is high oxalate, it causes calcification in tissues …
Calcium encourages oxalate clearing depending on how much oxalate is already in the diet, but once you’re low in oxalate, adding more calcium can increase the mobilization of oxalate.”
Citrate, such as fresh-squeezed lemon juice, taken internally, will also help dissolve oxalates.
Save This Article for Later – Get the PDF Now
Oxalate-Rich Foods to Avoid
In the interview, Norton specifies several foods that are particularly high in oxalate and need to be avoided if you’re sensitive. Top examples include:
• Spinach — Typically, spinach can have oxalate levels as high as 600-800 mg per 100 grams
• Almonds — Almonds generally contain about 122 mg of oxalates per 100 grams. Nuts in general tend to be problematic, not only for oxalates but also for linoleic acid. As noted by Norton:
“These seeds from the trees are designed with all these multiple anti-nutrients to kick you in the gut. All the anti-nutrients are gut toxic. They’re all causing some degree of gut damage. Nuts are just designed to be indigestible. They’re designed to dismantle your ability to digest food. If you want a healthy gut, you don’t want nuts kicking your gut over and over again.”
• Peanut butter — Peanut butter can have around 140 mg per 100 grams
• Sweet potatoes — They contain about 30 mg of oxalates per 100 grams, which is considered high compared to other vegetables but much lower than spinach or nuts
• Figs — Figs have approximately 40 mg per 100 grams
Surprisingly, collagen-rich protein sources, including gelatin, bone broth, animal skins, tendons and ligaments, meat cuts that include a lot of connective tissues such as oxtail, neck and shank, and organ meats like heart and liver, can also be aggravating if you’re sensitive to oxalates or struggle with recurring kidney stones. So, it is wise to avoid oxalates until your gut is healed and you can tolerate them.
Decreased Mitochondrial Energy Production Contributes to Oxalate Toxicity
Metabolic inflexibility refers to your body’s reduced ability to switch between fuel sources, particularly between carbohydrates and fats, efficiently. This inflexibility can impair your energy production capabilities. When energy production is compromised, especially at the cellular level in the gut lining, it impairs your body’s ability to maintain a low oxygen environment in the large intestine, which is required to keep pathogenic bacteria in check.
The large intestine is typically an anaerobic (low oxygen) environment where beneficial bacteria thrive. These bacteria are crucial for various functions, including maintaining the integrity of the gut barrier and modulating immune responses.
A healthy gut with a properly maintained anaerobic environment supports the growth of beneficial obligate anaerobes, such as the keystone species Akkermansia. When the oxygen gradient is disturbed due to insufficient energy production (as seen in metabolically inflexible individuals), it allows facultative anaerobes (bacteria that can utilize oxygen when available) to proliferate.
These bacteria often produce endotoxins, also known as lipopolysaccharides (LPS), which can cause inflammation if they translocate across the compromised gut barrier into the systemic circulation.
Oxalates indirectly contribute to this scenario by exacerbating mitochondrial dysfunction and reducing cellular energy production. This reduction in ATP production can impair the maintenance of the anaerobic conditions necessary in the large intestine, facilitating the overgrowth of facultative anaerobes and the subsequent production of endotoxins.
The Intricate Relationship Between Gut Bacteria and Oxalates
Another important bacterium is Oxalobacter formigenes, a beneficial bacterium in the gut that plays a crucial role in the metabolism and regulation of bodily oxalate levels. It digests oxalate crystals and basically signals the gut wall to excrete oxalate for its own nourishment.
In this way, Oxalobacter helps reduce the concentration of oxalate in your gut, which can consequently lower the risk of oxalate crystallization and the formation of kidney stones and other health problems. However, the relationship between oxalates and Oxalobacter also has a hazardous aspect.
While these bacteria can mitigate some of the risks associated with high oxalate levels, their presence and effectiveness can be compromised if the oxalate levels become too high or if the gut environment becomes inhospitable due to other dietary or metabolic imbalances.
Excessive oxalates can overwhelm the gut system, inhibit other beneficial gut flora, and contribute to a reduction in Oxalobacter populations, thus diminishing their protective role. But the reason oxalates are able to overwhelm your system goes right back to having low or impaired metabolism again.
Your body’s inability to produce cellular energy to maintain the oxygen gradient in your gut causes the Oxalobacter to disappear in the first place, which allows the oxalates to accumulate. It’s basically a self-perpetuating cycle in the wrong direction. As noted by Norton:
“It’s this vicious cycle because one of the major ways that oxalate itself is toxic is by breaking down cellular production of ATP. It blocks the last step of glycolysis. It blocks Complex II.
It causes all this oxidative stress and inflammation that messes up the mitochondria. It’s messing up the membranes of the mitochondria in the cell. So, this is one of its mechanisms of harm. And then you have these redundant ways in which the energy production is being destroyed.
And unfortunately, the body really tries hard to look like everything’s fine. So, this can go on under the hood for decades. Then suddenly in your late 30s or in your 40s, you suddenly feel old and broken.”
How to Minimize the Harmful Effects of Oxalates
We cover a lot of ground in this interview, so here’s a quick summary of the strategies and food choices discussed that can help minimize the harmful effects of oxalates or aid in their elimination:
| Limit high-oxalate foods — This is of course a no-brainer. Reducing your intake of foods known to be high in oxalates such as spinach, almonds, and peanut butter will decrease your overall oxalate load. |
| Increase your calcium intake — Consuming foods high in calcium or using calcium supplements can bind to oxalates in the gut, preventing their absorption and facilitating their excretion through the stool. Foods rich in calcium include dairy products, leafy greens, and fortified foods. |
| Hydrate adequately — Drinking sufficient water is crucial as it helps to flush out oxalates through the urine and prevents kidney stones from forming. |
| Balance your collagen intake — While collagen is extremely beneficial, it’s important to moderate its intake if you are sensitive to oxalates, given that collagen breakdown can lead to oxalate production. So, do consume sources of collagen like bone broth, but do so in moderation. |
| Optimize your gut health — Promoting a healthy gut microbiome by consuming probiotic-rich foods like yogurt, kefir and fermented vegetables can support the growth of beneficial bacteria, including those that can degrade oxalates like Oxalobacter. |
| Citrate consumption — Citrate, found in citrus fruits like lemons and oranges, can help by binding with calcium and oxalate, thereby reducing the formation of kidney stones. Avoid over-supplementation with ascorbic acid, however, as high doses can convert into oxalate. Ascorbic acid is the most common form of vitamin C used in dietary supplements. |
| Cook high-oxalate foods well — Cooking methods that involve boiling can help reduce oxalate content in foods as the oxalates will leach into the cooking water. |
| Topical calcium for oxalate-related skin irritations — If oxalates are causing skin irritations, applying topical calcium can alleviate symptoms by precipitating oxalates at the site. |
More Information
To learn more, pick up a copy of “Toxic Superfoods: How Oxalate Overload Is Making You Sick — and How to Get Better.” You can also find more information on her website, SallyKNorton.com, or follow her on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter/X and Instagram.
Key Food and Lifestyle Strategies for a Healthier Life
Reproduced from original article:
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2023/01/08/lifestyle-strategies-healthier-life.aspx
The original Mercola article may not remain on the original site, but I will endeavor to keep it on this site as long as I deem it to be appropriate.
Analysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola Fact Checked January 08, 2023
STORY AT-A-GLANCE
- Avoiding industrial seed oils, due to their high linoleic acid (LA) content, can go a long way toward safeguarding your health. Examples of cooking oils to avoid include canola, corn, rapeseed, cottonseed and soybean oil. As a general rule, anything over 10 grams of LA a day is likely to cause problems
- For cooking, excellent substitutions include butter, tallow, ghee and organic coconut oil. Olive oil and avocado oil are problematic, as most are adulterated with cheap seed oils
- If you’re older, or eat a vegan or vegetarian diet, you’re at high-risk for vitamin B12 deficiency, which can have serious ramifications for your neurological function. Low B12 can also lead to elevated homocysteine, which raises your risk for dementia and cardiovascular problems
- Carnosine, found in meat, helps reduce oxidative stress, especially as it relates to LA. Carnosine binds to harmful LA byproducts and helps your body excrete them. It’s also important for building muscle, and acetyl carnitine is very beneficial for your memory
- Oxalates, found in a wide variety of fruits, vegetables and nuts, can cause problems when they overaccumulate. Harmful effects include fibromyalgia, chronic inflammation and kidney stones
In the “Inspired” interview above, I discuss what I believe are some of the most important dietary and lifestyle strategies to safeguard your health, starting with avoiding seed oils (also commonly referred to as vegetable oils). Examples of cooking oils to avoid include canola, corn, rapeseed, cottonseed and soybean oil.
The reason for this recommendation is these kinds of industrial seed oils contain high amounts of a harmful omega-6 fat called linoleic acid (LA). LA is not dangerous in and of itself. The danger is really in the dosing. Most people consume up to 10 times more LA than they need, and the excessive amount is what causes the problem.
LA is referred to as an essential fat, which is true. You do need some. But it’s present in nearly all foods — including whole foods but processed foods and condiments in particular — so there’s virtually no way for you to become deficient.
In all likelihood, you’re getting far more than your body needs, and in excess, LA creates free radicals that cause oxidative stress and damage your DNA, cell membranes and mitochondria. In this way, they contribute to chronic degenerative diseases of all kinds and premature aging.
How to Calculate Your LA Intake
The best way to ensure your LA intake is within the safe range is to use a nutritional calculator such as Cronometer. Ideally, it is best to enter your food for the day before you actually eat it. The reason for this is quite simple: It’s impossible to delete the food once you have already eaten it, but you can easily delete it from your menu if you find something pushes you over the ideal limit.
Once you’ve entered the food for the day, go to the “Lipid” section on the lower left side of the Cronometer app. To find out how much LA is in your diet for that day, just note how many grams of omega-6 is present. About 90% of the omega-6 you eat is LA. You can also move your cursor over the omega-6 field and the program will rank the order your largest contributors of LA, and tell you how much is in each food.
How to Reduce LA in Your Diet
As a general rule, anything over 10 grams of LA a day is likely to cause problems. The lower the better, but a reasonable goal for most people is to get your level below 5 grams per day. So, how do you cut seed oils out of your diet? Top culprits to minimize or eliminate include:
| Vegetable oils or seed oils used in cooking | Processed foods, especially sauces, dressings and other condiments |
| All restaurant foods (not just fast food), as most will cook the food in seed oil, not butter or lard | Conventionally raised chicken and pork (both are high in LA due to being fed omega-6 grains1) |
| Most seeds and nuts (most, with the exception of macadamia nuts are loaded with LA) | Bread and other grain products |
Safer Alternatives
The next question then becomes, what do you replace these oils with? While I’m not a fan of avocado oil, fresh avocados are a great source of healthy fat as long as you limit them to one per day or less. Both olive oil and avocado oil, however, are problematic in that most of these oils are adulterated with cheap seed oils and/or have gone rancid.
It’s very difficult to find really high-quality, fresh, unadulterated olive and avocado oil. For example, a 2020 Food Control report2 found a vast majority of commercially available avocado oils labeled as “extra virgin” and “refined” were in fact adulterated and of poor quality; 82% were found to have gone rancid before their expiration date.3 The same goes for olive oil.
For cooking, excellent substitutions include butter, tallow, ghee and organic coconut oil. Lard used to be fine, but virtually all commercial hogs for the past 50 years have been fed grains, which makes lard relatively high in LA.
Still, even if you do find a good brand, I would limit the amount of olive oil or avocado oil to 1 tablespoon a day, as they can be high in LA. The total amount varies from brand to brand. In the case of olive oil, it could be as low as 3% or as high as 25%, depending on the type of olives used. Your best bet is to simply assume there’s LA in there and limit the amount you use each day.
For cooking, excellent substitutions include butter, tallow, ghee and organic coconut oil. Lard used to be fine, but virtually all commercial hogs for the past 50 years have been fed grains, which makes lard relatively high in LA.
Butter contains retinol (the active form of vitamin A), vitamin D, E and K2, antioxidants, minerals and iodine, all of which are important for health.4 About 20% of butterfat also consists of short- and medium-chain fatty acids, which are used right away for quick energy and therefore don’t contribute to fat levels in your blood. Therefore, a significant portion of the butter you consume is used immediately for energy — similar to a carbohydrate.
Chicken fat is lower on my list of cooking oils primarily because of the unhealthy diet chickens are fed. Conventional chickens are routinely fed genetically engineered grains loaded with glyphosate, so their fat will be negatively affected. The grains and corn are also loaded with LA, which will make the fat higher in LA. The same is true for pork, so when buying lard, make sure it’s from organically raised animals.
The Importance of B12
Chemical-dependent farming has depleted soils of many important minerals. While many are frantically concerned about the looming fertilizer shortage, there are very effective and efficient ways to grow food without synthetic fertilizers. The switch-over, however, does take time, so it’s not an immediate solution. But, in the long-term, if farmers do the right thing, we could actually improve our food production.
Soil depletion is the reason why many of us need to take nutritional supplements. This is particularly true if you’re eating a primarily plant-based diet. If you’re a vegan or vegetarian, you’re at high-risk for vitamin B12 deficiency, which can have serious ramifications for your health, especially your neurological function. Low B12 can also lead to elevated homocysteine, which raises your risk for dementia and cardiovascular problems.
B12 is best taken either by injection or sublingually (under the tongue). You also want to make sure you’re taking methylcobalamin, not cyanocobalamin (which is the most commonly found B12). When taken sublingually (either by tablet or spray), it goes straight into your bloodstream.
If you take it as an oral supplement, you have to rely on a glycoprotein produced in your stomach called intrinsic factor, which binds to the B12 and shuttles it into the intestine to the end of the small intestine where it’s absorbed. As you get older, you lose the ability to produce intrinsic factor, making you more likely to suffer from B12 deficiency.
Carnosine, Carnitine, Magnesium and Copper
Another important nutrient is carnosine, a dipeptide (meaning it has two amino acids — beta alanine and histidine — and carnosine is found in meat. It’s really important for reducing oxidative stress, especially as it relates to LA.
LA is highly susceptible to oxidation, and as the fat oxidizes, it breaks down into harmful subcomponents such as advanced lipid oxidation end products (ALEs) and oxidized LA metabolites (OXLAMs). These ALEs and OXLAMs are what cause the damage.
Carnosine binds to ALEs like a magnet and acts as a sort of sacrificial sink. It’s a substitute target for this really profoundly damaging molecule. In this way, carnosine allows your body to excrete the ALEs from your body before they damage you.
However, taking a carnosine supplement is not a good idea. Not only is it expensive, but your body doesn’t break it down well. If you do opt for a supplement, I recommend taking beta alanine, as this precursor will help raise your carnosine level. The best way is to eat animal products. You typically won’t need a supplement if you eat sufficient amounts of animal proteins.
Carnitine is another important nutrient found in animal foods. It is especially useful for building muscle and facilitating fats into your mitochondria for energy production. A special type of carnitine called acetyl carnitine, taken in large amounts (1 to 2 grams a day), is very beneficial for your memory, and when used topically in your eyes, as an eye drop formulation, can help prevent cataracts.
Magnesium and copper deficiencies are also very common. Copper deficiency is particularly problematic as it contributes to high iron levels in your tissues, which is extremely potent oxidative stressor.
One of the best way to raise your copper level is to eat whole foods high in copper, acerola cherries being the classic example. The acerola cherry is high in tyrosinase, which is high in copper. Magnesium is also something that most people need these days.
The Danger of Oxalates
Vegans and vegetarians can also run into problems through oxalates. Oxalate, also known as oxalic acid, is found in a wide variety of fruits and vegetables. While not harmful in and of itself — your liver actually produces oxalate naturally5 — oxalates can cause problems when they overaccumulate.
Overaccumulation can occur either from overconsumption, or because your body either absorbs exceptionally high amounts of soluble oxalates or overproduces oxalate (primary hyperoxaluria6), or if you excrete excessive amounts of urinary calcium (hypercalciuria7).8
An overaccumulation of oxalate in your kidneys can lead to the development of calcium oxalate kidney stones, the most common type of kidney stones.9 If you are predisposed to kidney stones or have calcium oxalate stones already, your doctor may recommend avoiding foods rich in oxalates, such as dark green vegetables (especially spinach and Swiss chard), bran, rhubarb, beets and beet greens, chocolate, nuts (especially almonds, cashews and peanuts), nut milks and nut butters.10,11
It can also be helpful to increase your calcium intake. While this may seem counterintuitive, seeing how calcium is the largest component of these stones, the answer to this paradox is that high dietary calcium actually blocks a chemical action that causes the formation of the stones in the first place.12,13
Oxalates can affect other organs and conditions as well. Examples include fibromyalgia, vulvodynia (vulvar pain)14 and chronic inflammation.15 Oxalate also impairs the absorption of nonheme iron and can lower your iron stores,16 needed for red blood cell formation.
What’s more, oxalates have the ability to chelate a number of toxic metals, including mercury and lead. Unfortunately, they do this by trapping the heavy metals in your tissues, which makes it difficult to eliminate them.17
The Importance of Strength Training
Exercise is, of course, a foundational aspect of good health, but the type of exercise you do can make a big difference. I’ve been an avid exerciser since 1968, and for the first 40 years of my life I focused almost exclusively on cardiovascular exercise such as running.
I completely ignored resistance training. Now, as I’ve gotten older, reality has driven home the importance of building and maintaining muscle. An estimated 9 out of 10 Americans are metabolically inflexible, insulin resistant or both, which contributes to obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, inflammation and arthritis, just to name a few.
One of the ways you can improve your metabolic flexibility is to have more muscle mass, because muscle is the biggest sink in your body for glucose (sugar). So, when you eat a meal, the receptors in the cells of your muscles, called GLUT4 receptors, absorb blood sugar, thereby lowering the level of sugar in your blood. Once inside your muscle, the blood sugar is converted to glycogen and stored for when your muscle needs it.
So, if you have enough muscle mass, you have built-in protection against high blood sugar and insulin spikes that cause insulin resistance and diabetes. You also need to be mindful of your LA intake, because high levels of LA are more damaging to metabolic flexibility than high levels of carbs.
What’s more, glutamine, a nonessential amino acid (meaning your body can generate it) is an important nutrient source for your immune cells, and the way your body generates glutamine is through muscle contraction. So, when you’re contracting skeletal muscle, you’re quite literally nourishing your immune system.
Are You Getting Enough Protein?
To build muscle, it’s really important to get enough protein in your diet, ideally animal protein. There are 20 amino acids and nine of them are essential, which means you have to get them from your diet, as your body cannot make them from other substrates. In particular, skeletal muscle requires branched-chain amino acids — leucine, isoleucine and valine.
Must you eat animal protein? No, but one of the problems with avoiding animal protein is that it is quite difficult to obtain enough complete essential amino acids, especially branched chained amino acids to stimulate the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR), an important anabolic switch that is activated by about 3 grams of branched chain amino acids.
While there are plants that are high in protein, they’re not identical or even equivalent to animal protein in most cases. Certain micronutrients found in animal foods you simply cannot get from plants. This includes vitamin B12, vitamin A (retinol not beta-carotene), creatine, bioavailable iron, carnitine and carnosine, all of which are important for muscle growth and health in general.
To determine your personal protein requirement, Lyon recommends 1 gram of protein per pound of ideal body weight (the weight you would ideally be, not necessarily the weight you are now). Once you have that number, you can divide it by the number of meals you eat to get your per-meal quota which, for older adults should be around 30 to 50 grams per meal.
For reference, there’s approximately 7 grams of protein in each ounce of steak, so a 5-ounce steak would give you 35 grams of high-quality protein. For children, the average amount per meal is around 5 to 10 grams, while young adults typically can get away with 20 grams per meal.
For most normal-weight adults, 30 grams per meal is really the minimum you need to stimulate muscle protein synthesis. If you have a robust strength training program, you may need to go even higher. To make sure you’re getting enough protein in your meals, consider using Cronometer. That way, you’re not guessing.
Time-Restricted Eating Helps Optimize Your Health
Another core lifestyle strategy that will help optimize your health by making you metabolically flexible is time-restricted eating (TRE), a form of intermittent fasting. I believe TRE is best done 16 to 18 hours a day, every day, which is probably the sweet spot to optimize metabolic health if you are insulin resistant or metabolically inflexible.
This schedule will give you virtually all the same benefits as calorie restriction with respect to longevity benefits, but without any of the downsides, the primary one being compliance. However, if you are one of the one in 20 that is not insulin resistant than you don’t want to decrease your eating time to less than 8 hours per day.
Most people eat more or less continuously throughout each day, which will keep mTOR continuously activated. When you’re doing TRE, mTOR gets stimulated only once or twice a day, which is not a problem. mTOR is best activated twice a day in a pulsatile fashion. When you activate it continuously as most people do, it can lead to an increase in risk in diseases like cancer.
I prefer to do my workout in a fasted state, followed by an infrared sauna and swim, and then break my fast afterward. This will reduce the carbohydrate load in the muscles as they’re using up glucose during the workout. This, in turn, gives you the additional benefits of autophagy.
In addition, when muscle contracts, it releases myokines, which play a role in both lipolysis (the breakdown of fat) and glucose utilization, and when you train in a low-glycogen fasted state, myokine release is increased.
- 1 YouTube, Omega-6 Apocalypse 2, Chris Knobbe August 25, 2021, 15:01
- 2 Food Control October 2020; 116: 107328
- 3 The Counter June 17, 2020
- 4 Weston A. Price Foundation January 1, 2000
- 5, 8, 11, 13 Asia-Pacific Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 1999
- 6 NIH.gov Primary Hyperoxaluria
- 7 Medscape, Hypercalciuria
- 9 Kidney Fund, Four Main Types of Kidney Stones
- 10, 12 The Cleveland Clinic, Oxalate-Controlled Diet
- 14 Restormedicine.com Oxalates and Their Role in Fibromyalgia Syndrome
- 15 BJUI International, Oxalate at physiological urine concentrations induces oxidative injury in renal epithelial cells: effect of α-tocopherol and […]
- 16 Iron Disorders Institute, Iron Balance With Diet
- 17 Great Plains Laboratory November 16, 2015
How Oxalates Can Wreck Your Health
Reproduced from original article:
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2023/01/01/how-oxalates-can-wreck-your-health.aspx
The original Mercola article may not remain on the original site, but I will endeavor to keep it on this site as long as I deem it to be appropriate.
Analysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola Fact Checked January 01, 2023
STORY AT-A-GLANCE
- Oxalic acid is a naturally occurring toxic, corrosive acid. When the oxalic acid has minerals attached to it, it’s called oxalate, which acts as a mineral chelator
- Oxalate forms crystals that your body has a limited capacity to process. Calcium oxalate, for example, which is oxalic acid with calcium attached, form into painful kidney stones
- Unlike some other food-related toxins, oxalate cannot be removed by cooking, soaking or fermenting the food. You also cannot simply take a mineral supplement to address the depletion oxalates causes
- The top three “superfoods” that are very high in oxalate and may cause trouble are spinach, Swiss chard and beet greens. Another high-oxalate food is almonds, which you can easily “overdose” on if you’re eating bread made with almond flour or drinking almond milk, or if you’re on a keto or paleo diet, as they both tend to rely heavily on almonds. Dark chocolate is another food that scores high for oxalates
- Oxalate damages cellular membranes causing excess calcium to flood the cell, resulting in accelerated cell death and other metabolic problems that contribute to chronic disease and ill health
In this interview, Sally Norton, author of “Toxic Superfoods: How Oxalate Overload Is Making You Sick — and How to Get Better,” reviews how and why even foods we’ve been told are healthy can wreak havoc on your health. As the title of the book implies, the main culprit in question is oxalate or oxalic acid, found in many plants, beans, grains, seeds and nuts, fruits, berries and herbs.1
So, just what are oxalates, why are they so bad, and how are they hidden in these superfoods that so many people are consuming? In short, it’s a naturally-occurring toxic, corrosive acid. In that state, it’s called oxalic acid. When the oxalic acid has minerals attached to it, it’s called oxalate.
Chemically, it’s a salt, and like other salts, it forms crystals that your body innately has a limited capacity to process. Calcium oxalate, for example, which is oxalic acid with calcium attached, forms into painful kidney stones.
And, unlike some other food-related toxins, oxalate cannot be removed by cooking, soaking or fermenting the food. You also cannot simply take a mineral supplement to address the depletion oxalates causes.
How Oxalate Causes Damage in Your Body
Oxalic acid is a dicarboxylic acid, meaning it has two carbons and each carbon has an oxygen molecule attached to it. “This special carbolic acid has all kinds of damaging toxic powers when it’s near a membrane,” Norton says. She explains:
“Membranes really matter to biochemistry and to our basic physiology at the cellular level. Your membranes have to have the right structure and the right materials in them to function well. You’ve been focusing lately on vegetable oils [linoleic acid] and how toxic they are.
It’s messing up the structure of the membrane, because a membrane is this double layer of fatty acids. Well, it needs a certain structure to work.
Now, the membrane does all kinds of intellectual communication processes in the cell, helps the cell decide what to do next in any situation, and you need to have certain fatty acids only on the inside of the membrane. It’s two layers. So, there’s what we call the inner leaflet and the outer leaflet.
On the inner leaflet, there is a phospholipid called phosphatidylserine … What’s getting into your body and causing trouble is the free oxalic acid ion, this single little molecule that easily transverses your gut because it just floats in the water between the cells. We call that paracellular trans …
When oxalate’s around, it causes membrane damage to the point where that innate structure where the phosphatidylserine is now showing up on the outside of the membrane. That’s bad news. For many cells, that means the cell is now in line to be removed because it’s damaged. It’s a signal to the immune system, hey, take away the cell. It’s been harmed.
So, you lose your structured membrane. That creates all kinds of headaches for a cell. Often it cannot function properly. This is especially true of the cells that line the vascular system. So, the endothelial lining that is this giant organ of physiology, metabolism and maintenance of the body can be in trouble after, say, a spinach smoothie.”
Top ‘Superfood’ Oxalate Offenders
The top three vegetable “superfoods” that are very high in oxalate and may cause trouble are spinach, Swiss chard and beet greens. Another high-oxalate food is almonds, which you can easily “overdose” on if you’re eating bread made with almond flour or drinking almond milk, or if you’re on a keto or paleo diet, as they both tend to rely heavily on almonds. Dark chocolate is another food that scores high for oxalates.
“There’s a peak at about four hours after you eat it where the level of this oxalic acid in your blood is really quite high. So, now that your cells have damaged membranes and … your poor liver is flooded with oxalic acid after meals, and the liver has zero physiology to break it down, change it, make it less toxic.
The liver literally makes more oxalate, and the more inflammation in the body, the more oxalate the liver makes … The amount that converts to oxalic acid depends on your vitamin B status. If you have enough B6 and B1, then it lowers the amount that becomes oxalic acid …
You also have to have low inflammation. People with diabetes and obesity have higher levels of generalized inflammation, so they’re likely to produce more endogenous oxalate.”
Oxalate Impairs Calcium Signaling
Once a membrane is damaged, oxalic acid can enter the cell. Oxalic acid is a calcium chelator, and calcium is critical to cell function. Cells use calcium as messengers, so it’s crucial for the self-management of the cell. Even before oxalate enters, which might take two hours, in the first 15 minutes after you’ve got oxalate near a cell, an increased amount of calcium will move into the cell.
In short, the cell membrane damage causes the cell to take up more calcium. That’s bad enough, but when oxalate follows, it lowers the effective calcium concentration from a physiologic standpoint. Norton explains what happens next:
“Now you’ve got cells that have too much calcium in them and too little calcium that’s actually functional. So, the cell keeps bringing in even more calcium because the oxalate is lowering the functional intracellular calcium by chelating calcium ions in the cell.
But in the meantime, the mitochondria are picking up calcium because they’re trying to save the cell from the excess calcium. So, this mitochondrial rescue problem kills the mitochondria and ultimately kills the cell as well. So, you’ve got multiple steps where the oxalate effects are kind of expanding into cell collapse …
The oxalate penetrates the cell cytosol area and the mitochondria and sits on … the active site of four metabolic enzymes, including the last step in glycolysis. So, the last step in glycolysis is blocked.
It also affects your ability to produce glucose and can contribute to low blood sugar, probably insulin resistance, and lots of metabolic problems because you’ve created an energy crisis in the cell … and you’ve got enzyme interference. Now, if your mitochondria ain’t happy, you can’t produce enough of the materials to even replace the cell. So, cell reproduction can be hampered.
They’re dying, their lives are shortened, they’re dying quicker, and they don’t have enough energy to produce enough proteins and other materials they need to duplicate themselves. So, you get fibrosis instead.
Instead of getting healthy maintenance of tissues, the fibroblasts start producing more and more of this scar tissue material and you get fibrotic gunk holding you together.
If you don’t have enough cells to hold the tissue together, you need this temporary stage of producing scar tissue to keep you from falling apart and suddenly bleeding out or having problems. This is a great thing the body’s doing, but in the long run, you could turn into a fibrotic mess and not know why.”
Oxalate Toxicity Increases Risk of EMF Toxicity
The concentration of calcium outside the cell is 50,000 times higher than inside the cell. Research by experts like Martin Pall in electromagnetic field (EMF) damage shows that EMF allows an influx of excess calcium into the cell, which causes a cascade of increased nitric oxide, superoxide and other toxic molecules. Oxalates also cause harm through that same mechanism. As noted by Norton:
“This is the intersection of all these toxicities where the oxalate toxicity creates increased vulnerability to the EMF toxicity. We see this in my client base where they’re frail and sensitive to everything.
When we get lower oxalates in the body, they’re tougher again and these other stressors aren’t quite as bad anymore. As you say, take control of your health. This is one place where you have more control over how much oxalate is in your diet than you have over EMF exposure in many situations.”
Symptoms of Oxalate Toxicity
Symptoms you might experience if you’re exposed to excessive amounts of oxalate include the following. For more in-depth details about the mechanics behind each, listen to the interview or read through the transcript.
“The main symptom pattern is that no one can figure out what’s wrong with you and you seem OK according to tests,” Norton says. “That’s a classic oxalate situation.”
I personally have struggled with a challenging itchy rash for 15 years that defied any diagnosis by multiple dermatologists. I finally realized that it was due to oxalates and it has dramatically improved by lowering my oxalate consumption. I also used to struggle with dental plaque and that seems to have also improved with oxalate reduction and using a dental scaler.
| Calcium oxalate kidney stones (which comprise about 80% of all kidney stones) | Itchy rashes |
| Interstitial cystitis (frequent urination and bladder pain) | Poor or slow wound healing |
| Frail skin that bleeds easily (as your connective tissues are being damaged) | Joint pain |
| Osteoporosis (as the oxalates are extracting minerals from your bones) | Calcium deposits |
| Digestive problems | Neurological problems ranging from bad mood and klutziness to tremors |
| Poor sleep | Rheumatologically muscle pains like fibromyalgia |
| Vision problems such as near-sightedness, cataracts and poor night vision | Dental plaque or tartar |
The Hazards of Excessive Vitamin C
Vitamin C and ascorbic acid can also lead to problems if your body is already loaded with oxalates as it is metabolically reduced to oxalic acid during breakdown. Norton explains:
“The major source of internal oxalate is ascorbic acid or vitamin C … There are lots of case studies of train wrecks from supplements, and lots of case studies about problems with intravenous vitamin C. Let me tell you my personal story. I had vitamin C chelation … I didn’t know I had an oxalate problem …
By the third time, I became harder and harder to stab for the IV needle because now my veins were ropier and rollier and would run away from the needle. That’s fibrosis … I only had IV vitamin C maybe 10 times. But the doctor and the nurse took no notice of this side effect of the treatment — that I was becoming more fibrotic and harder to puncture …
It’s hubris to say, ‘Oh, well, it’s fine. All my patients are doing great on my vitamin C IVs when you’re not open to seeing the side effects. One of the studies demonstrated that just with oral supplementation, for not all that long, once they stopped the vitamin C, the level of oxalate in the urine went way up.
So, while the body’s being assaulted by too much vitamin C, it’s busy sequestering the oxalate that’s forming and holding onto it and protecting the kidneys from devastation, from excessive oxalate load. Once you stop producing or eating too much oxalate, this holding pattern can let go, and now you see much higher oxalate levels in the blood and the urine.”
For these reasons, if you take vitamin C on a regular basis, Norton recommends limiting it to 250 mg a day. This is enough to meet your nutritional requirements and is unlikely to cause oxalic acid-related trouble. The exception would be if you are septic, in which case large doses of IV ascorbic acid can save your life.
The Antidote to Oxalate
The good news is there’s an “antidote” to oxalate that can be helpful if you’re struggling with oxalate toxicity or just happened to eat a high-oxalate meal. That antidote is citrate. I take citrates every day: magnesium citrate, calcium citrate and potassium citrate, typically with meals. This way absorption of any oxalate in the meal will be impaired.
“You definitely need calcium and magnesium with high oxalate meals,” Norton says. “But the bigger issue is this long-term toxicity, because we all grow up on high-oxalate foods. Peanut butter is high, wheat bran is high, potatoes are high. Oat bran is variable. Rice bran is high, wheat bran’s high.
The citrates in the minerals are especially important for this long tail of getting over the chronic illness of having an oxalate overload in your body. So, if you’re past the age of 10 and grew up on standard foods, you’ve got some degree of deposits in your bone marrow, your joints and glands …
The biggest biohack is calcium [citrate] because calcium promotes the clearing [of oxalate]. Some people can’t even tolerate the calcium because their body is so eager to upchuck this mess from its tissues that calcium gives it too much permission. Some people are so deficient in minerals.
The long term high-oxalate diet really sucks you dry of electrolytes and minerals, and you’re really fragile without the minerals. That’s slowing down the excretion from the tissues. The expulsion from the tissues requires a certain amount of metabolic heft and some access to electrolytes so the tissues can do what they need to do.
[I’ve seen] people who were heavy keto for three years and then went full carnivore, which is a zero oxalate diet — so, they went from super toxic high-oxalate diet to zero oxalate — which is a precipitous dive.
Some get immediately sick with more rashes … suddenly they are sick as a dog with oxalate poisoning because it’s mobilizing. All of a sudden, they’ve got enough nutrients and whatever. Now, the body’s turning it on.”
Detoxing Oxalate Takes Time
The take-home message here is that you need to go slow. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. Typically, after two years to two-and-a-half years on a low-oxalate diet, you may suddenly get sicker, because your kidneys are finally cleaned up and able to excrete oxalate more efficiently.
You’re then able to tap into deeper deposits. As a result, you may experience things like gastritis, migraines, anxiety attacks, gout and other kinds of toxic reactions. It can also increase uric acid, as the uric acid is replacing the oxalic acid. In this instance, it’s a sign that you’re clearing oxalate. Other signs of oxalate clearing include tartar buildup on your teeth, gritty eyes, gritty stools, hemorrhoids and burning stools.
Sources of Citrate
While you could take citrate supplements, raw grass-fed milk is a great option, as it’s high in calcium. Other options include sardines and lemon juice. As noted by Norton:
“[Dairy] has been the traditional nutrition … to get calcium because the only other good source is sardines and salmon bones. There is some bioavailable calcium in some of these low oxalate vegetables, but you can’t eat so much cabbage. Canned sardines are good too.
Citrate is so good. It is your friend. Lemon juice is a great source of citric acid and I use lemon juice as a therapy. I recommend people get a half a cup of fresh lemon juice, a quarter cup in the morning, quarter cup at night, and down it as a shot, or you can make a homemade lemon fizz.
It’s like an Alka-Seltzer Gold where you add the potassium bicarbonate and/or sodium bicarbonate and you can alkalize, because what happens is the liver turns some of the citric acid into bicarbonate, and alkalization helps so much because oxalate’s creating an acidic metabolism …
When you don’t feel good because your system is busy doing this nasty housekeeping and taking away this toxic waste out of your body, you go in acid, and the easiest answer is to juice a lemon, take Alka-Seltzer Gold or to use these citrate supplements. Citrate helps to alkalize, which is really great because now the kidney cells have an extra citric acid they can release from their own physiology into the urine, and that’s a critical factor.
If you have low citrate in your urine, you’re at risk for kidney stones because the citrate prevents us from getting the stones and helps to break down stones. I believe citrate’s attracted to the calcium and the calcium oxalate molecule or crystal nanocrystal or microcrystal. It attaches to the calcium side of the crystal, and it has an electromagnetic pull on that calcium that weakens the bond between the oxalate and the calcium.
So, now you have a three-way love affair where the two molecules are fighting over that calcium and the citrate wins. What that does is it turns the crystal of calcium oxalate, which is firm like quartz or glass, and it turns it into more of a chalky substance that’s easier to break down.”
If you use a powder form of the citrates, take a quarter teaspoon twice a day with meals. Norton prefers taking calcium citrate or magnesium citrate at bedtime. Both help soothe the nervous system and improve sleep. When using calcium citrate, she recommends breaking taking one dose at bedtime and one in the morning, plus two doses spread out during the day. With magnesium, twice a day is sufficient.
More Information
Norton hopes to publish a video course on oxalates sometime in 2023, hopefully by March. She’s also planning add-on training for health providers to get them up to speed. In the meantime, you can pick up a copy of of “Toxic Superfoods: How Oxalate Overload Is Making You Sick — and How to Get Better.” I believe the issue of oxalates is a vitally important aspect of optimal health that many miss.
You can also find more information on SallyKNorton.com, including a free downloadable PDF of low-oxalate recipes. There, you can also sign up for a Zoom group.
“We keep them small so you can interact with people and meet people that are on the journey with you and do some teaching there,” she says. “Eventually, when the course is out, we’ll be able to do more of the chat and share and talk about individual situations as a way to get into the material.”
How to Assess Your Biochemical Individuality
Reproduced from original article:
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2022/10/30/urine-organic-acids-test.aspx
The original Mercola article may not remain on the original site, but I will endeavor to keep it on this site as long as I deem it to be appropriate.
Analysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola Fact Checked October 30, 2022
STORY AT-A-GLANCE
- Functional genomics testing looks at the single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs, pronounced “snips”) of genes
- The urine organic acid test (OAT) can provide valuable insight into your biochemical individuality, and combined with genomics testing can help chart a course for healing complex, chronic health problems
- G6PD insufficiency, the most common enzyme insufficiency in the world, can result in a significant loss of NADPH, thereby increasing inflammation and decreasing mitochondrial function
- Elevated oxalate is a common cause of chronic pain and fibromyalgia. One way to lower your oxalate level is to take Epsom salt baths, as the sulfate will displace the oxalates
- If you suspect oxalates are part of your health problems, combining high-oxalate food with calcium-rich foods or a calcium supplement will prevent the oxalate from causing a problem by binding to the calcium in your digestive tract
Emily Givler1 is a functional genetic nutrition consultant with the NutriGenetic Research Institute and Tree of Life, founded by Robert Miller, a traditional naturopath and trailblazer in the field of functional genomics, which looks at the single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs, pronounced “snips”) of genes.
Here, Givler discusses the benefits of the urine organic acid test (OAT) — a little-known test that can provide you with valuable insight into your biochemical individuality.
“We’re all living in this super toxic world, so everyone is being confronted by insult and injury to their bodies every day. Even those of us who are in this field can tweak things based on our biochemistry to make things work better for us,” she says.
“There’s not one right answer for everybody. We’ve got to find what makes us unique and find those places where we’re a little bit more vulnerable and support those areas appropriately.”
Givler’s Personal Story
Givler’s own health challenges were in part what drove her into the field of functional nutrition. She explains:
“I started with chronic pain and pretty excessive fatigue as a teenager … I had test after test and really got no answers. It took about five years before I got a fibromyalgia diagnosis. At the time, it was reassuring to know that this wasn’t all in my head. Other people felt this way too.
But where I got frustrated was the only recommendations I was given were narcotic painkillers or antidepressants … I was still a teenager. I decided I wanted to have a liver and kidneys by the time that I was 40, so I did not go down that route.
But I really had to carve out my own path to try to regain my health. I definitely had some missteps along the way. I stopped eating meat. I started eating a lot of spinach, beets and Swiss chard. Sounds good, right? I was eating these three meals a day, seven days a week and just felt worse and worse.
My rheumatologist told me to plan on being disabled by the time I was 30. I was about 20 at the time and thinking, ‘Boy, I knew to expect disability, but I didn’t think it would happen this fast.’
It turned out I was really dealing with extremely high levels of oxalates, which cause crystalline precipitates to form in the muscle and connective tissue. This was causing much of my pain and depleting my nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate (NADPH), which was zapping my energy. I looked like I had fibromyalgia. I really think a lot of people who have that label are probably dealing with something similar.
The healthy foods I was eating, the spinach and the beets, are sky-high in oxalates. I don’t want to suggest that no one should eat them, but I was poisoning myself with these healthy foods … The lowest my pain level ever got was an 8 out of 10.
I can say that now, almost two decades later, it’s completely managed with no painkillers … There are too many people who suffer every day. They think they’re doing the right things. On paper, they’re doing the right things. But what’s right for one person may be totally wrong for them, [and] there are ways you can figure this out rather than just fumbling through the way I did.”
SNP and OAT Testing Are a Powerful Combination
The irrefutable evidence Givler needed was found in her OAT test. She’d also done Miller’s functional genomics test, which further supported her conclusion that her fibromyalgia was related to an excess of dietary oxalates.
Indeed, the combination of functional genomics testing and OAT can be very powerful. When I had the SNP test done, it revealed I have a genetic variant that is essentially equivalent to celiac disease, with the crucial difference that it does not cause any noticeable gastrointestinal issues. Still, this genetic flaw means I must abstain from gluten to optimize my health and avoid autoimmune problems. Turns out I have a problem with oxalate as well.
“As clinicians, we tend to get into the habit of wanting to put people on a protocol. We find something that works and we push it. It may work for a lot of people, but there are always going to be people who slip through the cracks because there are differences in our biochemistry,” Givler says.
“Whether it’s differences because of genetic predispositions that may make us metabolize things, like oxalates, histamine or glutamate, differently than the average person, or because of particular environmental insults that we’re exposed to, either because of our occupation or because of our geography — those things pile up and may make us fall outside of that normal box.
If we can use genetics as kind of the framework around which we build our protocols, and then use functional testing like the urine organic acid testing, we can more precisely target the types of dietary choices or nutritional, supplemental interventions, and in some cases, lifestyle changes, we need to implement to really propel us towards health …
I think histamine foods are a really good example. We can read volumes about how good fermented foods are for your gut … and how we should be eating these things every day. But if you can’t clear histamine, or if you’re dealing with excessive mast cell activation, and you bring these foods into your diet, you may set off a catastrophic cascade of events and make your symptoms exponentially worse.
Too often then, you’re going to be told, ‘You’re just having die-off. Just keep going. You’re just not doing enough of it,’ when actually you may be making yourself sicker. Getting the right guidance with the right functional testing can really make a huge difference in people getting on the right plan for themselves.”
The Most Common Genetic Disorder in the World
Givler’s SNP test also revealed she has glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) insufficiency, which is one of the most common enzyme insufficiencies in the world.
“This is where things get complicated,” she says. “Very few of us are dealing with just one thing. We have to see where these patterns of weakness kind of pile up … G6PD insufficiency … can result in a significant loss of NADPH. That can increase inflammation in the body and decrease mitochondrial function.
That, piled on top of my genetic predispositions to over-absorb oxalates, which will also deplete NADPH, really gives me a one-two punch when it comes to energy … [Dr. Mercola] and I have spoken pretty extensively about things I can do to rebuild my nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD) and NADPH levels. That has really helped me to propel my health to the next level as well.”
NADPH may in fact be as important as adenosine triphosphate (ATP), because while it lowers inflammation, it’s also the primary source of electrons in your body to internally recharge antioxidants such as glutathione, vitamin C and vitamin E. If that’s not working, it’s very difficult to get healthy.
The good news is there are simple and inexpensive ways to improve your NADPH, such as glycine supplementation. The bad news is you won’t know you have a serious NADPH problem unless you do these two tests.
I my view, doing genomic and OAT testing can go a long way toward figuring out what you need to do if you have a chronic complex problem and not getting better, and Givler is quite skilled in interpreting these tests. In my case, she also detected a B2 insufficiency. She explains:
“So few people are thinking about B1, B2 and B6, but they are critical. For you, for true metabolic flexibility, getting adequate B2 to work with the level of fat that you’re eating was a big piece of it. Interestingly, with the gluten, it was not just the SNP test that showed it. That was reflected on the organic acid test as well. It took about four months, being strictly gluten-free, for you to get that metabolite back in line …
It’s amazing how much insight we can get from looking at the right functional testing. These two are just a one-two punch for figuring out, ‘Is it some inborn issue that you need more of a certain nutrient than someone else, or is it just poor dietary choices for you? Is it an environmental toxin?’ When we pair [SNP and OAT] together, so many of those pieces really come to light.”
Is Glyphosate Exposure Affecting Your Health?
There are several different labs where you can order glyphosate screening for yourself and your pets, for example, EnviroScience’s ELISA (enzyme linked immunosorbent assay) method, which utilizes an antibody specific for glyphosate,2 and my preferred lab, Health Research Institute, whose testing kits I include in my online store.
According to Givler, certain patterns in your OAT results can also be indicative of a problem with glyphosate exposure.
“We can see patterns when there is high level of glyphosate exposure,” Givler says. “Glyphosate’s very disruptive for the gut microbiome but it doesn’t kill all species uniformly.
If there are elevations in clostridia species, yeast and depleted beneficial bacteria, that is one pattern you can see with glyphosate exposure, because it’ll kill the lactobacilli and the bifidobacterium and leave some of the more opportunistic organisms, which will make you more vulnerable to lipopolysaccharides.
Glyphosate also breaks down into oxalate. For some people who are not dealing with the genetic predisposition but are dealing with the secondary hyperoxaluria, that may be a result of glyphosate as well. If we see a lot of mineral depletions — since glyphosate is a mineral chelator — that may be an indicator that there are some problems.
High succinate on the OAT test also can be an indicator, because succinate and glycine combine to move into the heme pathway. Without the glycine, if it’s being disrupted by glyphosate, that level may be elevated. If you’re seeing high oxalates, high succinate, high clostridia and low good bacteria, I would start looking for glyphosate exposure.”
A Clinical Example: My Personal OAT Results
To give you an idea of what OAT might tell you, I share my own test results in this interview, which Givler interpreted for me. My first OAT was in August, and the results shocked me. It was not at all what I expected considering how strict I am about living a healthy lifestyle and eating a healthy organic diet.
“There were definitely some things out of line,” Givler says. “One of the first things that I always tell my clients is this is a written explanation for why you’re feeling how you’re feeling. Sometimes when people see things out of line, they get really upset about it …
But if we don’t know what’s wrong, then we don’t know how to bring you back into balance. I’m a data lover. The more data we can collect, the better. This showed us that your gut was not in the best of shape. You were maybe overdoing it on good bacteria. I recommend that you slow down on your probiotics.”
Turns out I had small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, also known as SIBO. Interestingly, I’m a huge fan of molecular hydrogen, as it has a long list of health benefits. Alas, SIBO type C is one of the few, if not the only, clinical conditions where molecular hydrogen may actually do more harm than good, as it feeds the bacterial overgrowth.
SIBO-C is typically caused by an overgrowth of archaea, which feed on hydrogen. Now, I had SIBO type D. But SIBO-D will often progress to SIBO-C, because the overabundant bacteria that cause the diarrhea produce hydrogen, which then feed the archaea, which then produce the methane, which then causes the constipation.
“That’s why many people see evolving gastrointestinal issues that start in one way and end up another way,” Givler says. “If you take hydrogen water and you get gassy, bloated, constipated or brain fogged, there is a really good chance that there’s an overabundance of organisms in your digestive tract.”
In my case, the therapy was cutting down on fiber and eliminating gluten. Elevated hippurate also revealed that my phase II liver detox was not keeping up with phase I. Givler explains:
“Phase I was moving too fast for phase II. Phase I takes those fat-soluble toxins and turns them into intermediary metabolites, which are more toxic than those toxins when they were sequestered in fat cells … They should move right onto phase II to move into one of our six conjugative pathways of detoxification so they turn into a water-soluble form to leave the body.
When hippurate is elevated, it’s often an indicator that you’re getting stuck with those more toxic intermediary metabolites. Phase II needs a little bit of assistance.”
My last test, in February, revealed the bacteria in my gut had rebalanced, but I still need to improve my phase II detox pathway. This test also revealed a mold marker suggestive of black mold exposure, which makes sense, as I had a small leak in my laundry room that had gone unnoticed for perhaps a year or more. Some of the wood behind the wall was rotted through by the time I discovered the problem.
Oxalates May Be a Problem Even if Test Results Are Negative
As mentioned, one thing that’s an issue for both of us are the oxalates. Interestingly, oxalates may be a problem even if your test is normal. Givler explains:
“[In your] first test we saw an overt elevation. There were oxalates physically leaving your body. The oxalic acid was elevated. But if you are storing oxalates, if they’re all aggregated in connective tissue, in the lungs or the pelvic griddle, in your brain or in your eyes … then they don’t necessarily show up in unprovoked urine tests.
Just in the same way that if you are doing an unprovoked heavy metal test, you are only seeing what’s excreted and not what’s being stored. There are times that the oxalic acid can show up in range, or even low, when there is truly a high body burden of oxalates.
This is where [you need to look] at the bigger picture. Is there mold? Is there yeast? Are there other types of dysbiosis? Are there genetic predispositions on genes like the alanine-glyoxylate aminotransferase (AGXT) or the glyoxylate and hydroxypyruvate reductase (GRHPR) or 4-hydroxy-2-oxoglutarate aldolase 1 (HOGA-1)?
If you find variants there and you find patterns of inflammation and pain presentations going along with it, then you may actually be dealing with retained oxalates. This is a risk for osteoporosis. It’s a risk for iron deficiency anemia because the oxalates will chelate your calcium; they’ll chelate your magnesium; they’ll chelate your iron and form these really painful precipitates.
The most common form or the one that people are most familiar with are kidney stones because the oxalates [are] physically leaving your body … But only 0.5% of people who have oxalate issues will actually develop kidney stones. The other 99.5% have issues, like myself, where the pain presentation or those oxalates are actually trapped in the body and creating issues.
They’re linked with some really serious health conditions, as well as a pretty significant amount of chronic pain. Like myself, they may find themselves doing healthy things that are really wrong for them, but there are some really excellent, easy and inexpensive things you can do if you suspect the oxalates are an issue. Or if you have testing like this that tells you beyond a shadow of a doubt that, yes, oxalates are a problem.”
How to Lower Your Oxalate Level
One way to lower your oxalate level is to take Epsom salt baths. Epsom salt is magnesium sulfate. When you eat sulfurous foods such as broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage and eggs, your body must metabolize that sulfur. The sulfur goes through a multistep process, getting converted into sulfite and then into sulfate.
When you take an Epsom salt bath or foot soak, on the other hand, it’s already in the sulfate form, which your body can absorb transdermally, thereby displacing a lot of the oxalates.
“Many of your listeners probably use Epsom salt soaks for aching muscles and they think, ‘Oh, the magnesium is really helping me.’ I don’t want to discount the role of magnesium — it’s really important for that — but that sulfate the magnesium is bonded to, if there are oxalates, that’s the part that’s really making the difference with pain,” Givler says.
“If you suspect oxalates, the Epsom salts are a pretty safe, gentle and effective way of starting to move those out of your system.”
Another little pearl Givler taught me is to combine any high-oxalate food I eat with calcium-rich foods or a calcium supplement. The oxalates will then bind to the calcium in the digestive tract, preventing them from becoming a problem.
“The oxalates get into the system through the sulfate transporters, and then they attach to the sulfate receptor sites, which is part of why they’re able to get into so many tissues.
We tend to think about absorption as being a function of the small intestine, but our sulfate transporters are all over the colon. If you can bind the oxalate and the minerals in the stomach, then they will bypass those transporters in the colon and be excreted in the stool without giving you any difficulty,” she says. “Bringing in any type of calcium source … is a really good idea if you have oxalate issues.”
More Information
You can learn more about Givler and/or become a client by visiting the Tree of Life website.
“For many, food has become the enemy because they can’t figure out what they’ll actually feel good on. They don’t realize they don’t necessarily have to navigate that road on their own through trial and error.
We can take targeted action, eliminate a lot of the guesswork, actually make progress and save a lot of money by testing and seeing what the right answer is for you, rather than shifting through wrong answer after wrong answer,” Givler says.
The NutriGenetic Research Institute also offers a 30-hour, 14-module online certification course to become a nutritional genetic consultant for health practitioners. This course will teach you what you need to know about functional genomic analysis and how to apply it in your own practice. Webinars for health practitioners are held every other Thursday.
Patients interested in more information are directed to the yourgenomicresource.com which includes a listing of doctors who have completed the training and are qualified to provide nutritional guidance based on your SNPs.
How Rhubarb Might Ward Off Colon Disease
Reproduced from original article:
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2022/04/04/broccoli-sulforaphane-health-benefits.aspx
The original Mercola article may not remain on the original site, but I will endeavor to keep it on this site as long as I deem it to be appropriate, and will not be bullied into removing it.
Analysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola Fact Checked April 04, 2022
STORY AT-A-GLANCE
- As a revered medicinal herb in traditional Chinese medicine, Chinese rhubarb, also known as rhei or dahuang, has long been prized for its antibacterial, anti-inflammatory and antifibrotic properties
- One of its most powerful compounds — emodin — is a natural anthraquinone with demonstrated antitumorigenic properties
- New research also found that emodin may be an “effective primary therapy against the onset of genetic and chemically induced sporadic colorectal cancer”
- Emodin reduced polyp count and size in a mouse model of colorectal cancer; polyps are growths on the inner lining of the colon that can turn into cancer
- Mice that received emodin had lower pro-tumor macrophages — immune cells that may promote tumorigenesis
Emodin, a compound found in Chinese rhubarb (Rheum palmatum), may help prevent colon cancer,1 confirming one of its ancient uses as an anticancer remedy in China. As a revered medicinal herb in traditional Chinese medicine, Chinese rhubarb, also known as rhei or dahuang,2 has long been prized for its antibacterial, anti-inflammatory and antifibrotic properties.
One of its most powerful compounds — emodin — is a natural anthraquinone with demonstrated antitumorigenic properties. Past studies in mice have shown, for instance, that emodin safely reduced mammary tumorigenesis and was beneficial for colorectal cancer.3 New research also found that emodin may be an “effective primary therapy against the onset of genetic and chemically induced sporadic colorectal cancer.”4
Majority of Colorectal Cancer Cases Related to Diet
Aside from skin cancer, colorectal cancer is the third most common type of cancer in the U.S., as well as the third leading cause of cancer-related deaths.5 Lifestyle factors, including dietary choices, play a role in the occurrence and progression of colorectal cancer,6 with only an estimated 20% of cases caused by genetic factors, and the remainder due to environmental factors.
Up to 70% of colorectal cancer (CRC) cases are believed to be related to diet, leading researchers with the University of South Carolina School of Medicine to state:7
“As such, bioactive food components offer exciting possibilities for chemoprevention due to their potential to target many factors associated with the development and progression of CRC. Furthermore, the ability of bioactive food components to elicit tumoricidal effects without displaying the high toxicity exhibited by standard pharmacological interventions may translate to improved quality of life and survival in patients with cancer.”
Citing a “critical need” for studies that both establish the efficacy of bioactive food compounds as well as reveal the mechanisms of action behind their benefits, the team set out to uncover emodin’s potential to combat colorectal cancer.
Rhubarb Compound Emodin Fights Colorectal Cancer
Using a genetic model of intestinal cancer and a chemically induced model of colorectal cancer in mice, the researchers administered emodin to the animals three times a week for 11 weeks. In both cases, emodin reduced polyp count and size.8 Polyps are growths on the inner lining of the colon that can turn into cancer.
In addition, mice that received emodin had lower pro-tumor macrophages — immune cells that may promote tumorigenesis.9 Overall, the researchers concluded that emodin is an “effective primary therapy” against the onset of colorectal cancer, noting:10
“We established that emodin reduces the M2-like protumorigenic macrophages in the tumor microenvironment. Furthermore, we provide evidence that emodin may be acting to antagonize the P2X7 receptor within the bone tissue and consequently decrease the activation of proinflammatory cells, which may have implications for recruitment of cells to the tumor microenvironment.”
Emodin Reduces Breast Cancer Metastasis
In addition to colorectal cancer, emodin also shows promise for other types of cancer due to its ability to block tumor-promoting interactions between cancer cells and macrophages. This alters the tumor microenvironment, ameliorating its immunosuppressive state.11
In 2020, University of South Carolina School of Medicine researchers again looked into the cancer-fighting properties of emodin, noting that they previously found it inhibited breast tumor growth in mice.12
In a study published in the journal Theranostics, they revealed that administering emodin to mice prior to surgery to remove breast tumors stopped the cancer from metastasizing and recurring in the lungs after surgery.
Emodin successfully suppressed epithelial mesenchymal-transition and cancer stem cell formation, and researchers noted, “Our study provides evidence suggesting that emodin harbors the potential for clinical development as a new effective and safe agent to halt metastatic recurrence of breast cancer.”13
Another 2020 study found, similarly, that emodin may be a useful therapy for triple negative breast cancer because it inhibits angiogenesis by targeting vascular endothelial growth factor A transcription.14 A 2016 review of emodin also broke down its anticancer activities, noting:15
- Emodin induces apoptosis and significantly inhibited the cell growth of four bladder cancer cell lines
- Emodin is antimetastasis and has inhibited the proliferation and invasion of breast cancer cells when administered in combination with curcumin
- Emodin may reverse multidrug resistance, which is a significant obstacle to cancer treatment, and “inhibits cell growth in several types of cancer cells and regulates genes and proteins related to the control of cell apoptosis, cell invasion, metastasis and cell cycle arrest”
Interest in emodin’s anticancer effects has increased in recent years, and a 2021 review published in Cancers touted its benefits, as well as potential toxicity, including hepatotoxicity and reproductive toxicity. Because of this, they noted that more research is needed to determine optimal dosages to maximize benefits and reduce potential toxicity. Still, they noted:16
“Emodin has been suggested to be effective for cancer management, principally in digestive system cancers (like pancreatic cancer) by modulating multiple molecular targets included in tumor growth, angiogenesis, invasion, and metastasis according to in vivo or in vitro experimental models. In current years’ investigations, emodin was shown to have anticancer activity in different cancer types …”
Emodin Protects Against Multiple Chronic Diseases
Emodin, which is found not only in Chinese rhubarb but also in aloe vera, giant knotweed, the herb Polygonum multiflorum (tuber fleeceflower) and Polygonum cuspidatum (Japanese knotweed), has impressive therapeutic properties beyond its anticancer effects, which include:17,18
| Anti-inflammatory | Antioxidant |
| Antibacterial | Antivirus |
| Anti-diabetes | Immunosuppressive |
| Osteogenesis promotion | Anti-osteoporotic |
| Anti-allergic | Hepatoprotective |
Given these fundamental properties, researchers wrote in the Chinese Journal of Natural Medicines, “emodin is expected to become an effective preventive and therapeutic drug of cancer, myocardial infarction, atherosclerosis, diabetes, acute pancreatitis, asthma, periodontitis, fatty livers and neurodegenerative diseases.”19
The neuroprotective effects of emodin and other rhubarb anthraquinones, including chrysophanol, rhein, physcion and danthron, are also well established. Such compounds have a therapeutic effect on central nervous system diseases, such as:20
| Cerebral ischemic stroke | Intracerebral hemorrhage |
| Traumatic brain injury | Brain tumor |
| Alzheimer’s disease | Depression |
With a more than 2,000-year history of use in traditional Chinese medicine,21 emodin is also known for laxative effects, has a wide range of actions on the immune system and may be useful in supporting bone health and preventing osteoporosis.
Emodin for Spike Protein Detox
If you’ve had COVID-19 or received a COVID-19 injection, you may have dangerous spike proteins circulating in your body. While spike protein is naturally found in SARS-CoV-2, no matter the variant, it’s also produced in your body when you receive a COVID-19 shot. In its native form in SARS-CoV-2, the spike protein is responsible for the pathologies of the viral infection.
In its wild form it’s known to open the blood-brain barrier, cause cell damage (cytotoxicity) and, Dr. Robert Malone, the inventor of the mRNA and DNA vaccine core platform technology,22 said, it “is active in manipulating the biology of the cells that coat the inside of your blood vessels — vascular endothelial cells, in part through its interaction with ACE2, which controls contraction in the blood vessels, blood pressure and other things.”23
It’s also been revealed that the spike protein on its own is enough to cause inflammation and damage to the vascular system, even independent of a virus.24 The World Council for Health (WCH), a worldwide coalition of health-focused organizations and civil society groups that seek to broaden public health knowledge, has released a spike protein detox guide,25 and emodin is a featured spike protein inhibitor, which means it inhibits the binding of the spike protein to human cells.
Interestingly, emodin also has antiviral properties and was found to inhibit the SARS-CoV coronavirus. In 2016, researchers noted:26
“[E]modin significantly blocked the S [spike] protein and ACE2 interactions in a dose-dependent manner and inhibited the infectivity of S protein-pseudotyped retrovirus to Vero E6 cells. The results suggested that emodin might be considered as a potential lead therapeutic agent in the treatment of SARS.
… these results suggest that emodin might be a potent viral inhibitor with a broad spectrum of antiviral activities, indicating that emodin might act as an antiviral drug by blocking virus infection and replication in a time-dependent and concentration-dependent manner.”
A Warning About Oxalates in Rhubarb
While emodin is primarily found in Chinese rhubarb, anthraquinones are also found in Rheum rhabarbarum — the tart rhubarb that’s popular for cooking. While rhubarb has many health benefits, such as being an excellent source of vegetable nitrates, which turn into beneficial nitric oxide, it’s also high in potentially toxic phytochemicals known as oxalates.
As noted by Dr. Paul Saladino, a certified functional medicine practitioner through the Institute for Functional Medicine, “You could get really sick from the oxalates in rhubarb, for example. We’re aware that some plants are so toxic that they’re frankly poisonous. We could die [if we eat them]. Basically, every plant in nature is part of a delicate balance, a delicate exchange system with other animals.”27
You can mediate against oxalate toxicity by adding about 500 milligrams of powdered calcium citrate or magnesium citrate — which bind to oxalate and allow it to pass unabsorbed through your digestive tract — to, for instance, a rhubarb-containing smoothie (or a green smoothie, as many vegetables contain high levels of oxalates). But if you’re consuming rhubarb in supplement form, it’s important to ensure that the oxalates have been removed.
- 1, 3, 4 American Journal of Physiology, Gastrointestinal and Liver Physiology February 28, 2022
- 2 Chinese Medicine volume 15, Article number: 88 (2020)
- 5 U.S. CDC, Colorectal Cancer Statistics
- 6 JAMA Network Open February 16, 2021, Intro
- 7 American Journal of Physiology, Gastrointestinal and Liver Physiology February 28, 2022, Intro
- 8 American Journal of Physiology, Gastrointestinal and Liver Physiology February 28, 2022, Abstract
- 9 Newswise March 9, 2022
- 10 American Journal of Physiology, Gastrointestinal and Liver Physiology February 28, 2022, New and Noteworthy
- 11 Theranostics. 2020; 10(18): 8365–8381. Abstract
- 12, 13 Theranostics. 2020; 10(18): 8365–8381. Intro
- 14 Theranostics. 2020; 10(15): 6839–6853
- 15, 21, 26 Phytother Res. 2016 Aug; 30(8): 1207–1218
- 16 Cancers 2021, 13(11), 2733; doi: 10.3390/cancers13112733, Conclusions
- 17, 18, 19, 20 Chin J Nat Med. 2020 Jun;18(6):425-435. doi: 10.1016/S1875-5364(20)30050-9
- 22 Trial Site News May 30, 2021
- 23 Newsvoice.se July 17, 2021
- 24 Circulation Research March 31, 2021
- 25 World Council for Health, Spike Protein Detox Guide
- 27 Player.fm, Saladino Interview with David Sinclair